That's about what I've thought for a few years. If an act hasn't become popular enough to make money touring, they have few other ways to make money. You probably have the local talent playing gigs in their area and hoping for a break, and then the big acts who can fill large arenas, and not much in between.
That’s where the real pain is. It takes a lot of work to break a new act. You have to tour tour tour, work work work. It’s more difficult now for many reasons. Most debut or sophomore record acts are now forced to tour in “festival” type bundles of five or six acts. Everyone gets maybe 25 minutes of stage fine and a free buritto every night. It’s a dead end.
Because this is a dead end bands prefer not to do it. Clubs no longer have enough national acts coming through to justify paying a full time booker/talent buyer. You have waitresses and bartenders part-time booking clubs. They know nothing at all about music or acts that are making headway. It’s all the same to them.
Everyone gets sick of it all and hires some 20 year old nozzle to hit play on his laptop on the weekends and call it EDM. It’s a mess. All of it.
I don’t really care anymore, I got out and got my money. As a consumer though, I know in getting shortchanged.